Pages

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Samuel James Matthews was born in Marshall County, Mississippi, in
1833. In 1845, his father moved the family to a farm northeast of
Monticello in Drew County, Arkansas. Samuel began studying law at an
early age and served as Drew County Clerk from 1856-1860 and 1886-1888,
and County Judge from 1882-1884. He represented Drew County in the
Constitutional Convention of 1868. After the Civil War, Samuel began a
nursery and fruit business and raised blooded stock. He also practiced
law in Monticello with Z.T. Wood and James R. Cotham. In 1903, due to
failing health, Samuel moved to San Diego, where he died December 29,
1903. He is buried at Monticello.
Samuel was married to Anna M.
Wilson, and they had three sons and six daughters. One of their sons,
Justin Matthews, Sr., was instrumental in bringing about major
improvements in North Little Rock in the early 1900s, including street
pavement, sewer and drainage improvements, and construction of two new
bridges over the Arkansas River. Justin also developed the Park Hill
District in North Little Rock as well.

This collection contains papers belonging to Samuel James Matthews and
his wife, Anna, including deeds, receipts, promissory notes, bonds,
insurance policies, land patents, and letters.

Deeds

1. 1857 November 4: State of Arkansas to Samuel J. Matthews and William T. Wells (Reel MG00205)

2. 1857 November 4: State of Arkansas to Samuel J. Matthews and William T. Wells

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The night
sky is full of mysteries.For centuries,
humanity has gazed into the black of night and wondered at what it was
seeing.Early astronomers charted the
heavens, recording the minutest of details about the cosmos as they saw
it.Today one can go to archaeological
sites around the world and find ancient buildings aligned perfectly with the
stars in the sky or with annual events such as the summer or winter
solstice.Because of this attention to
detail, any anomaly has caught the star gazers’ attention, causing new theories
to be cast to explain new observations.Human nature, on the other hand, has shown itself to be capable of
following fancy, of sharing in mass panic.Between 1896 and 1897, the entire country found itself in the grips of
UFO mania, a mania that even ensnared the state of Arkansas.

The story
begins in California on November 17, 1896, when people in Sacramento reported
seeing a large floating light in the sky.Some who saw the strange object reported hearing the sound of singing and
noises as if a great celebration was taking place on board the airship.Although the local press greeted the story
with skepticism, soon the sightings spread across California for the remainder
of 1896.

In February,
1897, the mysterious sightings spread into the Midwest as the airship was
sighted in Nebraska and Kansas. In March, it was spotted floating above Kansas
City, Missouri.By April, Canada got
into the action when people in Manitoba also reported seeing the object.As the stories of airships in the sky spread,
the sightings grew more elaborate.Those
who saw the airship in Abilene, Texas, reported that they heard the sound of a
full orchestra coming from the craft.Witnesses
in a few locations claimed to even talk to the pilot.Still, another account in Aurora, Texas
claimed that the airship crashed on a farm and the pilot was killed.Although the pilot’s body was burned in the
crash, the Dallas Morning News reported
that there was enough left of him to prove that he was “not an inhabitant of
this planet.”Legend has it that the
pilot is buried in an unmarked grave on that farm to this day.

Soon the
sightings began in Arkansas.On April
17, 1897, children playing outside in Texarkana’s warm early spring evening
noted seeing the airship in the sky.They quickly alerted their father, J.F. Floyd.Floyd told the Daily Texarkanian newspaper that he was unable to describe the
airship in much detail.He noted that it
appeared as “a huge ball of fire traveling with fearful velocity.” While Floyd’s story lacked much detail, a few
days later, Iron Mountain Railroad conductor Captain Jim Hooton reported to the
Arkansas Gazette that he had come
across the airship in the woods while on a hunting trip near Homan, in Miller
County.

He told reporters that he
spotted the airship landed in a field.When he approached, the pilot and his crew came out of the ship.Hooton asked them if this was the ship that
had been seen across the country and the pilot said it was.Then a crew member told the pilot that the
ship was ready to go and then it blasted off into the sky.Hooton got a good enough look at the airship
to make a sketch of it for the newspaper.

Perhaps the
most prominent of the sightings in Arkansas came on May 7, 1897, near Hot
Springs.Deputy Sheriff McLemore and
Constable Sumpter were out trying to serve a court subpoena when they saw the
airship approach and descend to the ground.They saw the pilot, who they described as a tall man with a long black
beard, filling the airship with water from a nearby stream.The pilot invited them to come on board and
take a ride, which they declined.To
prove their story’s authenticity, the lawmen swore out legal affidavits telling
the tale.

Meanwhile,
the airship’s presence was also spotted in Malvern and throughout Hot Spring
County.The Malvern Times Journal printed a rather tongue in cheek affidavit
signed by citizens that they had seen the airship as they exited the White
Elephant Saloon.The bar-goers swore,
“Our sight was dazzled by the brilliancy and splendor of a beautiful ship
flying in midair.Its majestic wings
fanning the air so violently that the breeze therefrom blew fiercely through
our whiskers and cooled our excited brows, and passed serenely on.”

So, what can
be said about this series of events?Were there really UFOs from another planet making their way to earth on
an intergalactic summer vacation trip?What
were people seeing throughout the country that spring?It is quite easy to discount the account from
a group of possibly inebriated witnesses, but not all of the witnesses had just
stumbled out of a saloon.It is possible
that many of the witnesses were possibly telling tall tales to get publicity; or
maybe they were wrapped up in the hysteria of the moment.Another possibility was that they really were
seeing something.That spring there were
reports in the newspaper about an airship built by a Professor Bayard that was
to debut in Nashville, Tennessee, at a science exposition.Although this was years before the Wright
Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, there had been numerous
inventors during this time period who built experimental aircraft.None of them, however, were capable of
prolonged air travel.Bayard’s airship,
however, would explain the cases where witnesses claimed to speak to the
pilot.So, there may be some truth to
some of the sightings.

What is
certainly interesting about the rash of sightings is that it seems that none of
them attributed the airship to otherworldly creatures.In fact, of the surviving newspaper accounts,
they almost exclusively attribute the airship to an unknown human
inventor.The only sighting claimed to
be from space was the report of the crash from Aurora, Texas, and that account
is problematic because the sightings continued across the country at least a
month after the supposed crash.Nevertheless, possibly the constant press reporting fueled the hysteria
that spring causing people to think that anything that seemed out of the usual,
a shooting star for instance, was the airship that was so constantly in the
news.Nevertheless, the rash of UFO
sightings would be repeated again and again for the next 120 years.Maybe it was hysteria driven simply by media
hype?If so, it was one of the first
great examples of mass hysteria driven by unidentified flying objects.Or maybe, if one visited bath house row that
summer, one might have caught a glimpse of a little green man, wrapped in a
towel, enjoying a little relaxing trip to the spas?

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Bois D'Arc Camp Number 28, Woodmen of the World, was organized at
Hope, Arkansas, shortly after Joseph Cullen Root founded the national
society in 1890. One of the benefits provided to members of the
organization was a distinctive tree-trunk-shaped grave marker. In 1944,
the Hope lodge was one of fifty nationally recognized for outstanding
fraternal and patriotic service.

This collection contains minutes, photographs, and other items pertaining to the Bois D'Arc Camp.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The Arkansas History Commission and the Northeast Arkansas
Regional Archives (NEARA) will be hosting a workshop on Saturday, Sept. 19 from
10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Powhatan Courthouse in Powhatan Historic State
Park. The theme of the workshop will be “Saving the Tree: Preserving Family
History.”

There will be three hands-on sessions focused on the
organization and preservation of family documents, photographs, and heirlooms,
including “Papers and Photographs” and “Artifacts and Heirlooms”
presented by staff from the Arkansas History Commission, Powhatan Historic
State Park, Plantation Agriculture Museum, and Jacksonport State Park.
The final session will be held at nearby Powhatan Cemetery with Arkansas
Historic Preservation’s Special Projects Historian Holly Hope giving a
presentation on caring for headstones and markers.

The event will also feature a scanning booth at NEARA.
Participants are invited to bring in material for scanning. An AHC
archivist will scan and save to CDs copies of scanned material for the
participants, who will be asked to share the digital copies with the Arkansas
History Commission for research, exhibits and publication.

The workshop is free but registration is required. Check-in
will begin at 9 a.m. Lunch will be catered. All session supplies and
materials will be provided. Registrants will also receive samples of archival
supplies donated by Hollinger Metal Edge. Registration is limited and
deadline for registration is Sept. 16, so be sure to make reservations soon!

The Arkansas History Commission, located in Little Rock, is
the official state archives of Arkansas and maintains the largest collection of
historical materials on Arkansas in the world. The Northeast Arkansas Regional
Archives is a branch of the Arkansas History Commission and is dedicated to
collecting and preserving primary source materials that represent the unique
history, culture and heritage of northeast Arkansas. Located at 11
Seventh Street in Powhatan, NEARA has been open since 2011.

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Arkansas History Commission
and the North Little Rock History Commission are joining forces to honor those
who served their country in World War I almost a century ago. On August
29, from 10 am to 3 pm, the AHC and the NLRHC will hold a symposium called,
The Great War: Service on All Fronts, at the Patrick Henry Hays Senior
Center in North Little Rock at 401 West Pershing Boulevard.

“Who Do You Think You Are?” Visits AHC in June

The Arkansas History Commission has been keeping a big
secret this summer! In April, we were notified that representatives of the TLC
genealogy documentary series “Who Do You Think You Are?” were coming to scout
our location for a forthcoming episode in the 2015 season of the series.
In May, story producers from Shed Media, one of the partners of the show,
visited Little Rock to meet with staff, check out our location, and review
preliminary research conducted for the episode.

AHC Introduces WWI Traveling Exhibit

At the World War I symposium the AHC and North Little Rock
History Commission is hosting, the AHC will debut a new traveling exhibit
focusing on Arkansas during World War I. The traveling exhibit, entitled,
The Great War: Arkansas in World War I, spotlights Arkansas’s role in
the war, both on the battlefield and on the home front. The exhibit
consists of twelve panels that showcase images from the AHC’s holdings,
including original documents, photographs, posters, maps, and historical
objects.

From the Director

Last month, I talked about a number of factors that shape
the Arkansas History Commission’s digitization initiative, like the initial
costs of scanning and creating metadata, and also those ongoing costs of
storing and migrating digital data so it remains accessible throughout the life
of your project. So, given the costs involved in creating digital
collections, how does an agency with limited funds, like ours, ultimately
decide what materials will be digitized for online access? With a collection
that has been growing for over 110 years, I can promise you that the selection
process isn’t random, and at times the choices can be agonizing.